Archive for April, 2008

I draw attention to the book “The conventional lies of civilized mankind” (1883) by Max Nordau, in which he critically analyzed the situation of western mankind before the first world war. He concludes with an optimistic note suggesting that future relations should be governed by solidarity and not greed (Selbstsucht), but it seems that none of his optimism has fulfilled itself. I ask: has there been progress in history?

This is a follow-up to my last post on Fraudulence in Science and Politics which concluded with the obvious, i.e., that “Whether in science, the economy or in the media, data evaluation by people whose objectivity might be jeopardized by financial or other interests, will lead to corruption.”

The importance of this became clear when I watched the Insight program on SBS dealing with the problems of genetically modified crops. A wide variety of people participated in the discussion.

What struck me most was that, apparently, no animal experiments on the toxicity etc. of new products are required, and companies, not independent researchers, have to provide the evidence that their products are not harmful. The research conducted by these companies is to a large degree non-transparent, not subjected to peer review, and not published. In other words, rules are even less strict than in the pharmaceutic industry, where animal experiments followed by clinical tests have to be submitted to authorities before new drugs are even considered for approval.

Probably the most important objection against the wide use of genetically engineered crops is the monopolization of seed supply in the hands of very few huge companies (and in some cases a single company). It leads to disappearance of biodiversity and could – in the long term – have disastrous consequences not only for the environment but for the viability of small local farms. A few days ago a large international meeting in Paris concluded that the support of small local farmers was essential to overcome the present food crisis.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald (April 17, 08), the US pharmaceutical company Merck has been accused of having lined up doctors (who apparently were not involved in the research) to put their names on publications in academic journals. Such ghost-writing appears to be widespread and calls into question all legitimate research of the pharmaceutic industry. Merck disputes this: although acknowledging that it sometimes paid medical writers to draft reports, it says that it then handed the reports to the doctors who did the research. However, an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association states that Merck had indeed manipulated a considerable number of publications promoting the pain drug Vioxx (which was withdrawn from the market in 2004 because it was linked to heart attacks, with Merck agreeing to pay $US 4.85 billion in compensation), and that some of the authors had contributed little to the work. It suggests that each author of publications in medical journals should report his/her specific contribution.

Fraud in the politicical information industry:

The New York Times April 20, 2008, published a comprehensive report on how the Bush administration has mislead the public. Full report here:

The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and GuantÃ¡namo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. Its report is based on these data.

Some excerpts here:

“How the Pentagon Spread Its Message”

“Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administrationâ€™s wartime performance…..”

“The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.”

“In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.”

“the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.”

“Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, like Jeffrey D. McCausland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests.”

“Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration. They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests.”

“Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts … properly armed … can push back in that arena”

“Conversely, the administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. You’ll lose all access, …”

Whether in science, the economy or in the media, data evaluation by people whose objectivity might be jeopardized by financial or other interests, will lead to corruption. Such corruption in politics may have catastrophic effects on the stability of the system.

Here I show what a retired professor does in his spare time. He popularizes science, as in this example!!

In a previous post I discussed Platonian archetypes and their application in ecology, with special emphasis on vacant (empty) niches. In this post I present an illustrated example.

Because the species illustrated exist in the mind of their creator, they must be considered to be archetypes. Both species have an organ, the balloon arising at their anteriors, which allows them to occupy a niche, the stratosphere, by lifting them into it whenever threatened by an enemy or in pursuit of an enemy. However, since both species have not yet made it into nature, this niche is still vacant. Of course, some people say that the niche does not yet exist, because the species have not yet occupied or “created” it. Ignore this nonsense! Scientific work should not be reduced to a squabble about semantics.

Note also that the vicious cycle continues. You may not have conquered a new niche to escape from enemies, but they will follow anyway.

I find it refreshing to find articles which disagree with the prevailing scientific dogma, such as Darwinism, which puts emphasis on selection as the main (or, apart from neutral evolution, only) driving force of evolution. Woodley’s article is such a case.

Woodley, M.A. [2007], On the possible operation of natural laws in ecosystems. Rivista di Biologia-Biology Forum 100: 475-486, suggests that natural Platonic laws may operate in ecosystems. He bases this claim on two kinds of law-like behaviour observed in nature: 1) adaptations towards specialization which can be looked at as typological lineage degeneration away from “ideal” archetypes, in which specialization makes species more sensitive to environmental perturbations; 2) occurrence of convergently evolved forms which suggest a limited number of niches or possible organismal body plans (Platonic moulds).

Ad 1) 19th century biologists like Haeckel (who was a Darwinist) and others after him have indeed distinguished successive phases of initial explosive diversification, specialization and degeneration leading to extinction in various fossil lineages (‘Epacme’, ‘Acme’ and ‘Peracme’ of Ernst Haeckel [1866]. But extinction of animal groups is not a lawful phase of an evolutionary cycle, because the ancestors of extant forms have never passed through it (Rensch, B. [1954], Neuere Probleme der Abstammungslehre. Die Transspezifische Evolution. Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart; Rensch, B. [1959], Evolution above the species level. Columbia University Press. N.Y.).

If Woodley were right, we would expect that species in high diversity regions, such as the tropics, where evolution is more advanced (Rohde, K. [1992], Latitudinal gradients in species diversity: the search for the primary cause. Oikos 65: 514-527) should have narrower niches (e.g., latitudinal ranges, habitats, etc.) than species in low diversity regions (at higher latitudes). However, a recent meta-analysis of the latitude niche breadth hypothesis and computer simulations failed to find support for it. Likewise, Rapoport’s rule, according to which latitudinal ranges are generally wider at high latitudes, does not generally apply to animals and plants.

Also, Kaufman’s work (Kaufman, S.A. [1993]. The origins of order. Self-organization and selection in evolution. Oxford University Press, New York Oxford) and some other recent studies suggest that evolution is not driven exclusively by natural selection, but that many characters evolve not because but in spite of selection: “spontaneous order is everywhere present’ and ‘many conceivable useful phenotypes do not exist’. He uses rugged fitness landscapes to illustrate the process of evolution. However, peaks in rugged fitness landscapes (which might at first glance be considered to be equivalent to archetypes) are not constant, and it is therefore doubtful that the peaks in such fitness landscapes correspond to Platonic archetypes.

Ad 2) In his discussion of the second point (limited number of available niches suggested by convergences), Woodley proceeds from Hutchinson’s niche definition as a species’ place in a multidimensional hyperspace and concludes that “in the absence of species distributions, the niche can have no substance, thus indicating that ‘vacant niche’ is simply a non-descriptive term at best”. But Hutchinson himself used the term “vacant niche”, and there is indeed no reason, even in the context of Hutchinson’s definition, why one shoud not refer to the possibility of the existence of more places in multidimensional hyperspace than are actually apparent (or “filled”) at at a particular point in time. One might prefer the term “potential” or “virtual” niches, but the term “vacant niche” has the advantage that it draws attention to the possibility that more species can be accommodated without the necessity of compressing already filled ones. As pointed out by Rohde, K. [2005], Nonequilibrium Ecology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: “A vacant or empty niche, thus, is simply a concise way of saying that more species could exist in a habitat, as suggested by comparative studies.” – On the other hand, Woodley admits the existence of vacant niches in the Platonian context: “The existence of a vacant niche when considered in the above light is also significant, as it indicates that abstract form, wholly separate from its biological realization, can exist within an ecological context. Species are attracted to and can evolve to fill niche vacancies, and in doing so can acquire a range of forms that would at least be in part predictable from a study of the vacancy.” Nevertheless, the number of niches must be limited, because onvergence and orthoselection occur in evolution and must be the result of the limited number of ‘Platonic moulds’. “However it is not the quality of the environment that is necessarily provoking the adaptation, it is indeed the degree of competition which forces a species to specialize.”

Generally, according to Woodley, whereas the prevailing Darwinian view assumes that evolution is primarily driven by contingencies, the typological view holds that evolution in ecosystems is essentially deterministic and orthogenetic. Importantly also, Woodley believes that convergent forms occur because they are useful for the ecosystem.

Empirical evidence does not support the view that evolution has filled all possible niches. There has been an accumulation of taxa in the course of evolution to the Recent, and there is no evidence that this accumulation was accompanied by a corresponding compression of niches. ” Examining species diversity of various groups in ecosystems as diverse as marine benthos, insects of fern, or parasites of marine and freshwater fishes, the conclusion must be that ” considering the vast differences in diversity of similar habitats or hosts ” only a small proportion of potential niches is occupied, which makes it unlikely that interspecific competition is of such overriding importance as often assumed (see the recent discussion in Rohde 2005).

I conclude that ‘natural laws’ are indeed likely to exist in nature which force evolution into certain ‘moulds’, although it is doubtful that these moulds are constant and correspond to Plato’s archetypes. There is no substantial evidence which supports the view that adaptive radiation generally is a lawful process of lineage degeneration, from less to more specialized forms. There is much evidence in support of the view that niche space is largely empty; the term ‘vacant niche’ is appropriate and useful for drawing attention to this. Interspecific competition is probably not as important as often assumed. – Woodley’s claim that “convergent forms occur because they are useful for the ecosystem” is not supported by any evidence and it seems indeed highly unlikely that this suggestion can even in principle be supported by empirical evidence.

You don’t publish outright false reports, but direct attention away from important matters to trivia, such as:

“Media critic” Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post today devoted pages of his column to Obama’s bowling and eating habits

“they yammer about Drudge-promoted gossip endlessly, and then insist that their own chattering is proof that it is an important story that people care about. And because they conclude that “people” (i.e., them) are concerned with the story, they keep chirping about it, which in turn fuels their belief that the story is important”

Glenn Greenwald was a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books: “How Would a Patriot Act?” (May, 2006), a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, and “A Tragic Legacy”. He has written a third book to be released shortly: Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

I refer to an article by Gerard Wright in the Sydney Morning Herald April 7, 08 which discusses the subprime mortgage crisis and implications for the banks.

In the US, in 2006, there were 5.6 million households with mortgages with negative equity (that is, a mortgage higher than the value of the house). It is estimated that this will increase to 10.76 million by the end of the year and may even reach 20 million. Many families will be forced to leave their homes to banks and simply walk away. The social costs will be enormous.

What are the reasons?

According to Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in the US culture of the last 20 years the norm has been to rip off everything you can. He further says that the banking landscape will change. “You are talking about a large amount of defaults, way beyond any historical pattern”. Gerald Cassidy, a senior researcher with RBC Capital Markets, predicts 150 bank failures over the next three years.

Does all this require only minor adjustments, or is a complete change in our philosophical attitudes and in the economic paradigm (largely uncontrolled free market economy) underlying economic policy necessary? Not long ago the Soviet system was overthrown as a consequence of its rigid economic and political structures, which prevented any meaningful adjustments. Has the time come to throw overboard the laissez-faire economy with its emphasis on more and more growth, and, more generally, our economic greed: let’s get as much as possible, whether you need it or not? Sokrates said looking at items for sale: how many things there are which I don’t need.

Such a change would solve many of the environmental problems, which are usually little considered when calculating the costs of things.

1854 – 1904. Failed at school, as a journalist and founder of a theater group. His novel Die Sozialisten found no resonance. Consequently impoverished. Called himself a “Meerwunder an Erfolglosigkeit” (miracle of unsuccessfulness). Wandered in various European countries, before returning to Berlin, where he “ not infrequently – slept out of doors. Finally found a home in the house of the “Neue Gemeinschaft”. Became an iconic figure of the Berlin boheme. Founded the “Cabaret zum Peter Hille”, where he held musical-literary evenings of high standing. Wrote, among others, some novels and a tragedy. Friend of some influential writers.